all the frozen heartbeats
Characters: Gildarts Clive, Layla Heartfilia, Ur Milkovich
Summary: And the river flowed gently.
After the darkness, all was bright.
(This always happened. He should be long used to this.)
Sunlight was casting thin shadows onto the deep green meadow and the man awoke from what was not just a slumber but the passing from one world into another. Reddish brown hair shone in the sunlight as he rose to his feet, his skin unscarred and his face free of the wrinkles years of worry and laughter had left behind. And he walked through the forest until he met someone.
Someone of fair skin and golden hair, someone with sunlight in her smiles. Someone who had not changed, not even in all those years. The dress was perhaps less luxurious than the last one he had seen her in but it was still pink and she was carrying a basket full of crimson roses.
(He wondered when she had ever not waited for him when they ended up in the space in between, boxers getting ready for the next round they could only lose.)
"You are, of course, the last one to arrive," she said with a smirk, deep hazel eyes gleaming with uncontained joy. "As usual, no?"
"Layla," he greeted politely, reaching out and shaking her hand. "How, you did not … this time…?"
"You ask because I did not die in a battle like you and the others, no?" she replied, a sigh leaving her lips as she gracefully stepped away, over bundles of green grass and onto a well-hidden path. "Well, it seems like fighting against an illness is seen as a battle as well."
"Ivan…" He wanted to ask, truly. He wanted to voice the question, to prove the world and himself, especially himself that his once-upon-a-time-friend's and brother's name no longer held power over him, that he had closed the chapter and that he was through with it. He really was not.
"…could not face Ur and so he went further already," she said as she shook her head, perhaps in pity and sadness, perhaps because she simply could not understand how something so pure and beautiful could end with tears and slamming doors. "There is much bad blood between them, you see? It will take more than one life for them to forgive each other."
(More endless circles of pain and blood.)
"I had feared that this might happen although I had hoped…" he sighed as he followed her down the pathway he had walked so many times before. This was hardly the first time that he had died and neither would it be the last. Some things repeated themselves over and over after all. "She is still there then, I guess?"
"Making the Queen of Spades leave? Impossible," the blonde said as she opened the gate and they finally reached a small house. "I asked her to move on already. She deserved this. She spent all those years in limbo … she resurrected herself just to die properly, she was mad in the end."
"Poor Ur." He was not saying this for the first time. He had said it countless times before and he would say it countless times again because it was the bitter, bitter truth.
"Certainly, yes."
And so he entered the house. The black-haired woman was napping on the couch, curled into a smaller form like a cat - and had she not always been like a cat? Smooth in her movements, it had been easy for her to blend in with the night whenever she had wanted to. Her purple hair - because it had a rich shade of purple rather than being black - was gleaming in the sunlight.
"She tried hating Ivan for what happened for a very long time," Layla explained, gliding through the room to rouse the other woman gently. "However, she no longer can hate people. She is terribly tired … we all are, I think."
Gildarts nodded at her.
Queen of Hearts, they had called her once. Queen of Hearts because her mistake had been to love even after there had been nothing left to love. Ur had been the Queen of Spades because her greatest mistake had been another one. She had fought even when she had long lost, when there had been nothing left to win.
He wondered what she was dreaming about, if she remembered her death as vividly as he remembered his - the pain and the blood and the darkness and the feeling of falling, falling, falling further and further. [Down, down, down.] Or perhaps she remembered better days. She would deserve this, would deserve this because she had never been lion-hearted like him because she had always been too smart for empty bravery. But she had been proud, too proud. She had never allowed to let herself fall down because she had never seen the beauty and the freedom in falling after fighting for a long time.
He had understood Ur better than anyone else, including herself. They had both been warriors, always, in each of their lives. She had been other things as well. She was a smart woman, someone who yearned to create rather than to destroy. But she was not like Layla who had been a scholar. Not like Ivan who had been a trickster and a liar, sometimes (too often) a backstabber. He knew what it was like when the thirst for battles was in your blood for centuries, in each of your lives and you could not get it out because it was a part of what made you who you were.
Ur had always been a refined blade, too beautiful, too elegant to be stained with blood. And she had stained herself, stained herself because of her stupid ideas of sacrifice and things that were just worth dying for. Foolish woman.
But his understanding for her did not equal love. He understood her better than anyone, better than Ivan but her fate had always been entwined with Ivan's and never with his own. (Perhaps this was for the better, her fate had never been a kind one.) He doubted that Ur and Ivan were star-crossed lovers (star-crossed because in nearly each of their lives, they had killed one another for stupid reasons) but their connection was uncanny and he would not mess around there - he had long burdened enough sin onto his shoulders.
So he stayed away, kept his distance. Whispered his words into the wind when she was sleeping. Prayed for her salvation. This was fucked up and he knew it. But how long could he pretend? Pretend that he did not care about the way she slowly fell apart. Pretend his heart did not break alongside with her own?
He had once promised to fix "it" but he had no idea what "it" was anymore. He only knew that he was suffocating along with everyone else. The roles they had chosen centuries ago were robbing them off their ability to breathe and he was afraid of what would become of them. Ivan's insanity was perhaps because of his exhaustion and he was scared of following the same path one day. He was scared that - if he was ever able to do this - fixing Ur's soul would ruin him, that he would give all he had for this cause and end up as a nothing. Saving her might ruin him. Making her understand would ruin him. But saving her without making her understand was impossible.
"She has waited for you … to pick her up."
He turned his head, having forgotten Layla's presence. He had spaced out only for a few moments, he then realised. Ur was still asleep, no, she was slowly waking from her slumber. "I see."
"Don't mess this up, yes?"
He nodded, silent for once. "Ur," he greeted the curse of his lifetimes pleasantly.
"Gildarts," she replied although she could have called him Octavian or a hundred other names. She was not waiting to be saved even though Layla thought her to be, she never had. She was no princess who had fallen out of her fairytale. She was no damsel in distress who kept waiting for a knight in shining armour to sweep in and save her and her kingdom. But Gildarts breathed for being the dramatic hero, she knew this. She had known this in each and every of her lifetimes and she would never forget this. So she had to cling to someone else, to someone who would never save her, someone who would let her rescue herself, someone like Ivan. But she still preferred Gildarts' company over Ivan's for reasons connected to multiple betrayals and the scars, mental and physical, the black-haired man had left on her mind and her skin along the years.
Ivan's name meant nothing but tragedy to her. It used to mean friend, brother even. But not anymore. Ivan has crippled her one time too often for her to forgive him, for her to listen to him ever again. But hating him, truly hating him, took too much energy from her, energy she did no longer possess. These circles had drawn so much strength from her and she had prayed that at least one time, she could peacefully pass from one life into the next - without the detour over the realm they always met up in.
She knew that Layla thought she had gone crazy. And she knew that Layla was right, too. Her sanity had suffered along the years but when it came down to it, she had made the right decision, had made the most of what she had been given. She had cried inside, had hit the walls that had closed in and she had survived. She was a survivor. She was no victim.
She had shed off her old weaknesses in the moment of her death.
She was no fool, never had been. Forgive and forget was no longer going to cut it for her. She had been proven wrong too many times when she had attempted to see the good in someone else. And she did not need love to save her because love was only an excuse people used as a reason to hurt one another. She had decided to become someone who never had to hide her reasons.
"Has been a while," he said as he sat down and she saw from the corner hand how Layla walked out of the room and she felt guilty because Layla could have moved on already, could have reunited with her husband much like Ivan had reunited with his wife.
(She might feel nothing but distaste for the man but she wished for him to find his way again.)
"That it has," she replied softly, her hands placed on the table before her. She is calmer now, calmer than ever. (She had only ever found her peace in death and this time, not even Ivan can disturb her serenity.) Her heartbeat went steady and her hands were relaxed.
But this was all a lie and she knew it. She had been insane in the last days of her last life and she remembered the night she had clung to Layla like the other woman was her anchor, whispering over and over that she was not crazy, that she was healthy. Layla was a good friend for conversations at two in the morning, Ur had always known that. Layla was a good listener, too, someone who truly tried to help.
"Did you die in the winter?" Gildarts asked, all of a sudden and blunt as always.
She turned her head, nodding slowly - a short memory of the red, red liquid oozing out of her wounds. "So perhaps it was not my season in the end," she mused aloud. "Then again, all comes to an end in the winter … so maybe it was fitting."
"Layla said that Ivan was not here," he went on, his voice wavering and she wondered why because Gildarts had never doubted himself. He had been great and strong, a mighty sword to her powerful shield. They had been a good team but she could not love someone who felt so much like an addition to her own power. (That was a lie. One she tried not to acknowledge as one.)
"He was not," she said and she closed her eyes because the memories of the last time she had seen Ivan were too fresh and too painful because she saw him walking through that door, countless accusations in his eyesa although he had had no right to blame anyone. It had been his fault just as much as it had been everyone else's.
They were all stuck in limbo for the same reason after all and accusations would not get them out of the mess any sooner. Their lives were like the grains in an hourglass, once it had all ran out, the glass was turned again and it started all over again. Always.
"He will come around sooner or later," Gildarts said, cradling his head in his hands because he, too, knew that this was unlikely. Ur could appreciate his attempt to make her feel better but she knew the facts far too well to believe him. Ivan would not come back, not before she could find a way to apologise for killing him all those years - and she had not meant to kill him. It had just happened because she had been defending herself. She had not aimed for his heart, she had aimed for his shoulder.
"There are some millennia left before the world will die – or so Layla says," Ur replied, a tiny smile in place. "Say, when are you going to move on, Gildarts?"
"Soon," he said, a shrug and a sigh. "And you know that the timelines are vastly messed up. I was Kevin and lived in a world without magic before I was Octavian and commanded armies. So there are hundreds and thousands of lives we can live before we will be raised from this perdition."
"We will leave together with Layla," she said, turning her head to smile at her friend who had reappeared in the doorframe, holding a vase full of roses. "We will not leave someone behind."
Not after the last time they had dome this and the pain had been to much for them because while being three out of four was painful, being two out of four was agonising (and Ur had not forgiven them for twelve lives later for leaving her behind). They belonged together. Their fates were tied together. Although they left never together, they always arrived at the same time.
"You think it is time?" Layla asked, slowly approaching them. "But Gildarts just arrived."
"It is time for you and Ur and this means it is time for me as well," the man said as he rose, holding out his hand. "You have waited long enough."
A flash of light and their world collapsed before the vase hit the floor.